The Fed - Distribution: Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989
Graphic: How Class Works - New York Times
Tools that allows students to manipulate factors to determine class descriptions. While this should be taken as definitive in any sense, it can launch a valuable discussion
Public-Use Data and Tools - Data Products - Center for Economic Studies
A comprehensive Census tract-level dataset of children’s outcomes in adulthood using data covering nearly the entire U.S. population. For each tract, we estimate children’s outcomes in adulthood such as earnings distributions and incarceration rates by parental income, race, and gender. These estimates allow us to trace the roots of outcomes such as poverty and incarceration to the neighborhoods in which children grew up.
Report: Billionaire Bonanza 2018 - Institute for Policy Studies
Three individuals—Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett—still own more wealth than the bottom half of the country combined. - It is irresponsible to teach US History without sharing this and the other statistics on this list. The record of human history does not include one example of a civilization that survived this type of wealth disparity without significant upheaval
Three dynastic wealth families—the Waltons, the Kochs, and the Mars—have seen their wealth increase nearly 6,000 percent since 1982. Meanwhile, median household wealth over the same period went down by 3 percent.
Billionaire-Bonanza-2018-Report-October-2018-1.pdf
The full report
Why inequality is growing in the US and around the world
Globally, inequality is so extreme that the world’s 10 richest men possess more wealth than the 3.1 billion poorest people, Oxfam has calculated.
<p>The rich tend to spend less of their money than the poor. As a result, the extreme concentration of wealth can slow the pace of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12237">economic growth</a>.</p>
<p>Extreme inequality can also exacerbate <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674980822">political dysfunction</a> and <a href="https://ideas.ted.com/the-4-biggest-reasons-why-inequality-is-bad-for-society/">undermine faith</a> in political and economic systems. It can also erode principles of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-020-09697-z">fairness and democratic norms of sharing power and resources</a>.</p>